Green Eagle

I'm sure most of you have heard the above phrase.  It has arisen, in the last few years, as a battle cry among evangelical Christians and their enablers, after it became clear that they were never going to be able to convince sane people to replace the established scientific facts of evolution with a pack of infantile myths crammed down the throats of school children.  So, they fell back on their "compromise" position, which involves battering us into treating their patent nonsense on an equal footing with scientific fact.  This would be the "centrist" thing to do, and therefore, it would be fair to everyone, right? Well, I am sure most of you are familiar with this idiocy, but what I have been noticing lately is that it is a paradigm of the entire Republican approach to reality- the fabrication of a wholly specious (and in the end utterly ridiculous) alternate reality, and then immense pressure being applied to force people to grant this mytholo...

Remember the tea party?  Remember when they were the force that was going to change the country, the people who were going to send the Socialist Communist Muslim back to Kenya and run the country the way the founding fathers wanted it run, with no black people in charge, and with businessmen entitled to do anything they damned felt like, where everyone could carry an automatic weapon anywhere, and where government kept its hands off of Medicare, and all of the other good things that government created?  Where did they go? Green Eagle was all over the teabaggers, right from the beginning.  He even went to numerous tea party events, and followed many more closely.  So, who could be better than Green Eagle to explain what happened?  Here's my take: The tea party people, as distinguished from ordinary Republican drones, never existed.  At the end of the Bush Administration, Republican leaders had to face a dreadful prospect:  They had just cheere...

From a Connecticut newspaper , we learn this: "Father of Newtown victim heckled at hearing" There might be some hope for this country if we were just dealing with flaming assholes.  But the other side are animals who are not capable of human decency. Sorry, that's my takeaway from all the years I've been watching this sort of thing.

Here's an amusing little Facebook interchange that Green Eagle had yesterday with a wingnut.  It sort of reveals, I think, the difference in intellectual capacity and honesty that left wingers and right wingers bring to an discussion.  I think you will agree. Third person:  "I'm saying an AR-15 is only good for one thing, and it ain't squirrel huntin'..." Ignorant right wing asshole:  "I agree, it's mostly good for protection from Tyranny, just like in the Constitution." Green Eagle:  "The old lie, over and over again, Norman. That is not in any way what the second amendment is about, as revealed in the Federalist Paper remarks of the people who wrote the second amendment. In fact, Alexander Hamilton said that people who believed that were mentally ill. Here, for your information is something on this subject I posted to my blog a couple of weeks ago: http://largegreenbird.blogspot.com/2012/12/about-that-second-amendment.html  (reader...

Well, here's an excerpt from an article at Daily Kos that will make you throw up in the communion plate: "Turns out, when a man sues a Catholic hospital for malpractice because his wife and the twins she was carrying inside her died when she turned up in the emergency room and her doctor never bothered to answer a page—well, things get a little tricky. Yes, the Catholic hospital adheres to the strict Ethical and Religious Directives of the Catholic Church, as set forth by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. And yes, those directives include the claim that "[t]he Church's defense of life encompasses the unborn" and a mandate to uphold "the sanctity of life 'from the moment of conception until death.'" But come on . That obviously does not apply when Catholic Health Initiatives, the Church-affiliated organization that runs the Church-affiliated St. Thomas More Hospital where a young woman and her two unborn fetuses died, is ...

I've written recently about the possibility of a real sea change in attitudes in this country.  I haven't been following internal Israeli politics that much lately, but it looks like things might be changing there too.  Here's a bit from a story at Talking Points Memo: "...everyone has been operating on the premise that the Israeli polity is locked on the right or center-right and just getting righter.  But the results didn’t bear that out. Support for the consolidated party of the right, Likud-Beitenu dropped dramatically. And the big picture is that the ‘right’ only seems to have won the barest of majorities according to the early votes — 61 seats. Haaretz currently puts it this way. Right - 43 seats. Center-Left - 50 seats. Ultra-Orthodox - 18 seats. Arab Parties - 9 seats.   But this looks to be a very brittle coalition. Either one which has a single vote majority or one that puts together parties which just won’t be able to stay in a single coalition for lon...

Just in time to give Conservatives a huge boost in the ongoing gun debate, we hear today this story (from Texas- where else?) that indisputably demonstrates that more guns on campus actually make our students so much safer: "A fight at a Houston college campus today resulted in a shooting that left three people injured and two others in custody, officials said. Three people were injured in the gunfire, which police say stemmed from a fight that broke out between two men on campus...The shooting took place in the center courtyard of the campus between two buildings..." This dramatic incident proves beyond a shadow of a doubt how much safer all students are when people are allowed to carry guns on campus and, uh...wait a minute...uh...uh...just forget it.  This shooting has absolutely nothing to tell us about guns and is totally meaningless. ...And can I repeat:  It happened in Texas. 

A story about reproductive rights that I think has far wider significance: "Seven in 10 Americans believe Roe v. Wade should stand, according to new data from a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, as the landmark Supreme Court abortion-rights ruling turns 40 on Tuesday. That is the highest level of support for the decision, which established a woman's right to an abortion, since polls began tracking it in 1989." Though I am very happy about the substance of this poll, I want to comment on something else:  There have been few issues in the last half century subject to such an endless, dickish campaign of hatred and lies from the right as the issue of abortion.  It is tremendously reassuring to  me to see that, at this point, the American people seem to no longer be buying into these well-financed delusions.  A new era has possibly dawned, in which money and ruthlessness are no longer enough to lead Americans...

Right wing blogs- the gift that keeps on taking: Jonah Goldberg, Town Hall:  "It's hard for a lot of people, particularly on the right, to recognize that the conservative movement's problems are mostly problems of success." Success at destroying the economy. Michael Walsh, PJ Media:  "That Texas Republican who's threatening legislation to jail any gun-grabbin' federales in the Lone Star State actually has history on his side." Let him give jailing the federales a try and see what history has in store for him. Michael Barone, Town Hall:  "To judge from his surly demeanor and defiant words at his press conference on Monday, Barack Obama begins his second term with a strategy to defeat and humiliate Republicans rather than a strategy to govern." And here's his strategy to defeat and humiliate Republicans:  tell the American people what they really believe.  And, it's working.  Sorry about that, Michael. Paul R. Greenberg, ...

Yesterday was National Gun Appreciation day, during which only five people were shot at gun shows, none fatally. Hoorah!

Note: the following is something I wrote about six months after Obama took office, during a previous flareup of Obama-Hitler baiting from the right.  I think it's worth reprinting at this point. Of all the blithering idiocies that make up the black-is-white phony reality of the right, none is more bizarre than the currently popular delusion that the Nazis were actually liberals. In support of this malicious distortion, conservative spokesmen have taken to openly comparing the behavior of the Obama administration to the first few months of another government- that of Adolf Hitler. This absolutely ludicrous assertion would, in a sane world, not receive a minute's credibility. Yet, it has been popping up over and over again in the wingnuttosphere, and apparently there is a pool of lunatics willing to accept it as true. Now, although a lot of people know quite a bit about World War II, very few seem to have much concrete information about the early years of Nazi...

Long time readers of Green Eagle (both of them) may sometimes wonder whatever became of our beloved Orly Taitz, the Queen of the Birthers.  Orly has sort of lost the limelight due to the presence of Celebrity Birthers like the inimitable Donald Trump, the Stupidest Rich Guy on Earth (well, except for George W. Bush, of course.)  Well, Orly's obscurity the last couple of years is certainly not due to a lack of effort on her part.  She still holds the prize as the most deluded birther on earth, thanks to things like the following, an excerpt from her latest monumentally stupid, rejected court filing, which is absolutely breathtaking in its audacity: " Additionally, widely published picture by Dr. Scott Inoue, Obama's former classmate, shows Barack Obama as a third grade student in Hawaii in 1969. At the same time official Obama school records show him in Indonesia in 1967-1969 attending school in Jakarta Indonesia under the name Barry Soetoro. It means that from January...

Before President Obama has even been sworn in for his second term, there are already promises from Jackasses Republicans to impeach him.  In particular, a couple revolve around throwing him out of office if he dares to issue any sort of "executive order" (i.e. telling the people who work for him to do their jobs) about guns. Well, today, Obama issued twenty three of those dreaded executive orders.  In particular, Freshman Texas Representative Steve Stockman and perennial jerk Louie Gohmert (also from Texas- what a surprise, huh?) have promised to introduce bills of impeachment for this. Well, come on, guys- put up or shut up.  Let's see you try to impeach Obama right now, or else you will be forever known as lying wimps with an emotional age of about three.  Keep your word, or go away for ever. Man, the next few weeks are going to see some really pathetic behavior. Update:   I'm sorry for being so unclear. Louie Gohmert is already known as a lying wimp...

Earth shaking news:  Last week, Supreme Court Justice Clarence "Dim Bulb" Thomas broke a seven year (!) self imposed silence on the bench to utter the following words of wisdom: “Well — he did not — .” I must say, I spent far longer than I usually do trying to come up with a sarcastic remark appropriate to this news, but I totally failed.  This man is an embarrassment to the United States, and the Republican President who put him there should be deeply ashamed of his misuse of the sacred responsibility given to him to select our Supreme Court Justices.  There is nothing in any way funny about this stupid, ignorant, corrupt man sitting on the Supreme Court, nor is there anything to laugh about in the damage that he and his more articulate but equally corrupt fellow conservatives on the court have done, and continue to do, to this country.

It's that time again!  Time for Green Eagle to drive you half crazy with an orgy of meaningless screeching!  I mean, what else are parrots for, right?  At least Green Eagle is polite enough to let other do the screeching for him.  So, here goes: First the award for over the top Rhetoric of the Week: Kevin Fobbs, Renew America:  "The nation that was represented as a symbolic shining city on a hill that President Ronald Reagan spoke about over 30 years ago is now becoming a broken mud hole of shattered dreams. America's morning that has dawned over the nation is now bearing witness to the shredding of constitutional protections which have safe guarded families since the infancy of the republic. Obama has given the order to Vice President Biden: full steam ahead to obliterate gun rights in your town. You and your family are the targets and what will you do?" What a bunch of twaddle.  Never forget, it was Reagan and Bush that turned our shining city int...

There are three hundred million guns in the United States.  This situation exists for one reason only- the craven capitulation of our leaders to the NRA and its endless, well financed campaign of bullying.  If political leaders had stood up to this disgusting group and its big-money backers in the sixties or seventies, much of this problem would not exist today. Stripped of the bullshit surrounding this problem, here's the simple truth:  The endless gun violence that plagues our country will never be brought under control until a large percentage of these guns are removed from society.  Obviously, the gun owners we need to worry about are not going to voluntarily relinquish their weapons, whether they are political lunatics or just garden variety criminals. The only hope we have of dealing with this is for the government to start a serious, widespread program of forcible gun confiscation, which will have to last decades in order to repair the damage done by fift...

From a recent article in the New York Times: "One study found that patients’ mortality rates spiked when nonprofit hospitals switched to become profit-making" I don't think you really need to know much more than that to get what is going on in our country.  Time was (you know, back a few decades ago, before Saint Ronnie came along and greed became the great American value) when the health care system in this country was intended to help sick people get better.  No more.  It's all about a few hundred CEO's getting ungodly rich, and to hell with everyone else.  And if you think things are different in any other big business in this country, you're living in a world of delusion. It's us versus them, guys.  The days when what was good for GM was good for the country (if they ever existed) are long gone.  Today, what's good for the corporations of the world is bad for the rest of us.  We are never going to be able to find our way out of an endless re...

With guns being used these days to kill little kids and all, people on the right have been hunting for stories of folks who used their God-given right to defend themselves with a lethal weapon, to argue that we should just be allowed to pack any kind of heat we want.  Well, in a spirit of bipartisanship, Green Eagle would like to bring you the inspiring story of a champion of gun rights and her experience. This is the story of Melanie Hain.  You may not remember her name (Green Eagle certainly didn't) but you may vaguely remember her story.  A couple of years ago, when walking around with guns in public was all the rage among the wingnuts, Melanie made the national news for packing a pistol at her child's soccer game.  Here she is, and quite a sight too: Well, I wouldn't mess with this mama.  She's out to protect herself, and if you bug her, watch out, right?  She's armed and dangerous. So, it's about time that we checked in with Melanie and found o...

California's current governor, Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown, derided for decades by Republicans as a loony liberal crackpot, has accomplished a feat that no one believed possible: "For the first time in five years, California is not facing a deficit as Gov. Jerry Brown and lawmakers work to put together a spending plan for the next fiscal year.  Brown released his budget Thursday morning for the 2013-2014 fiscal year, proposing a $97.7 billion plan that is 5 percent higher than the current year's spending. California today is poised to achieve something that has eluded us for more than a decade - a budget that lives within its means, now and for many years to come," the governor wrote in his budget message to the Legislature, saying voters made this possible by approving Proposition 30." One more nail in the coffin of the great right wing lie that Republicans are the fiscally responsible party and Democrats are a bunch of spendthrift wast...